The Bees Awards – one of its kind international social media marketing award, is held for the third time this year. And what a great year! On the 1st edition, 23 countries participated. On the 2nd edition, 33 countries. This time, no less than 40 countries joined the competition. The list of campaign entries has been as impressive as for the past awards, with big international brands such as Nike, Volkswagen and McDonalds.

In addition to the impressive country representation, this year’s Bees Awards was also a bit more special and exciting to us at Mindjumpers. We were invited to be a part of the international jury! In the jury, we have helped identify the best marketing efforts based on strategy, creativity and results. These campaigns will define standards and work as best practices for the future. We are happy to list the winners of Bees Awards 2012:

Best Use of Micro-Blogging Platform – Twitter Army by Joe Public

Best Use of Social Media Platform – The Generous Store by Anthon Berg by Robert/Boisen & Like-minded

Best Use of Mobile – Carling Black Label – Be the Coach by Ogilvy Cape Town

The winning, as well as the nominated, entries all prove that social media has become a global and highly effective marketing tool for brands and organisations around the world, creating amazing results that couldn’t be reached without the power of this media and the people engaging with it.

Two entries, who were both named winners in no less than two categories, were that of K-Swiss: MFCEO created by the agency 72andSunny and the Go Beyond the Cover by Agence Tuxedo. Both cases have created a lot of attention, which I mainly believe is thanks to their untraditional characters. As K-Swiss used provocative and unexpected humour to reach their audience, Dermablend (the brand behind Go Beyond the Cover), used provocative and unexpected elements to create a viral effect of their branded video. With this, both brands succeeded to differentiate themselves from their competitors and reach valuable results. Check out the cases in the videos below:

K-Swiss: MFCEO – Winning entry in Best Campaign and Best Copywriting

Go Beyond The Cover – Winning entry in Best Branded Viral Video and Best Art Direction